Fortune, Fashion, and Fraud: How Julia Garner Reinvented Anna Delvey

By Deepa Lakshmin


the opening thing you notice about Anna Delvey is her accent: husky German vocal fry, faint Russian twist, British-English spoken with the singsong musicality of a American building a name for herself in New York City. Her intonation shifts once she’s negotiating million-dollar firm deals or clinking glasses on a yacht in Ibiza — or pleading “not guilty” to numerous felony expenses, including grand larceny, attempted grand larceny, and theft of services.


“To me, that gave a lot of direction [about] who the character is, just the accent alone,” the actress Julia Garner, who plays Delvey in a new limited series from Netflix, tells MTV News over video chat. “This is somebody that is attempting to be something that she’s not.”


Critically acclaimed for her role as Ruth Langmore on Ozark, Garner taught herself to talk in Delvey’s tongue for Inventing Anna. The nine-episode arc pulls from writer Jessica Pressler’s blockbuster 2018 investigation for New York magazine’s fashion bible The Cut, which chronicled the real-life Delvey’s whirlwind climb up Manhattan’s social ladder and into the pockets of bankers. The article attracted media attention nationwide, also it wasn’t long before Shonda Rhimes scooped up the rights for a television adaptation branded with an apt slogan: “This whole story is totally true. With the exception of the parts that are fully made up.”


The show packages Delvey’s rise and fall via eyes of people around her, from the journalist chasing down sources to the hotel concierge she tipped in hundred-dollar expenses to companions who charged thousands on Delvey’s behalf. In the event you think waiting on hold while calling your bank takes forever, just wait up until you visualize how long it takes for Anna’s wire transfers to go through — if they do at all, that is.


Delvey brands herself as a German heiress with a $60 million trust fund nevertheless, ugh, her international credit cards keep getting resisted, so do you mind covering the check, just this one time, and she’ll pay you back any time her dad sorts it out? These are the types of promises she makes to associates and acquaintances alike. Her endgame? Launching the Anna Delvey Foundation, a luxe Manhattan clubhouse for the elitist of the elite. To investors, it’s an idea with potential. To Anna, it’s her purpose in life, her baby. She protects it at all expenses, literally, and woos industry giants with the money and connections to bring her grand vision to life.


“Anna is afraid,” Garner says. “She came all of the way to New York. She does not wish to fail. Although why doesn’t she wish to fail? Why is she so afraid of failure? Because Anna’s afraid of rejection — deep, deep rejection. And once you’re severely afraid of rejection, it affects your identity. I feel like a lot of folks are having these fears right now, in this day and age with social media and with unhealthy self-esteem.”


In Inventing Anna, this fear manifests as “fake it up until you make it,” an adage Delvey’s lawyer quotes in her defense. Place on Earth in Russia as Anna Sorokin, she followed her family member to a little German town, where we visualize her poring over style magazines that glorify New York. There, nobody would raise an eyebrow at a new surname, and she may launch her prestigious business by getting powerful people to believe in her as much as she believes in herself. Her hustle is juxtaposed against the ambitions of other entrepreneurs, like her futurist boyfriend whose app falls flat as well as a fictionalized depiction of Billy McFarland whose Fyre Festival went up in flames.


“It’s not an easy part,” Garner says. “Anything where Anna is showing being weak, however also anytime Anna was attempting to trick or manipulate something or someone was also very challenging, because there really are so several layers to it. You never hope to be a villain and play it like it’s a villain. I don’t even like calling her a villain. I don’t know what she is. Is that weird to mention? She’s so several things.”


A fashionista, for one. High-end designer clothing is so crucial to Delvey that it feels like a character all its own. She notices what you wear and, yes, judges you for it; she even hires a personalized stylist for her trial. In one “hilarious” fantasy scene, Garner says, “it’s almost like Anna’s walking on a runway, yet she’s walking in court and posing for the photographers… I routinely wanted to laugh any time If I was doing a strut like on a catwalk in a courtroom and folks are just sitting there. It was so uncomfortable, although it was so funny.”


Well-documented on social media, her outfits — a little bit black Michael Kors dress, white lace before the judge, thick Céline frames — convey the status and strength she wants her peers (and the jury) to be able to see. She reiterates, even as she faces years in prison, that she’s an organization professional doing what needs to be done to get her foundation out of the early phases. Why is each person getting in her way? Meanwhile, each person else is asking, who is Anna Delvey?


“I don’t know. I don’t think Anna even is aware who she is,” Garner says. “I think that’s the largest problem, to be sincere. I think she’s figuring it out… I can mention this because I was playing her. You could be yourself and still not know yourself.”


“I’m not anticipating that everybody is going to agree with Anna once they’re watching the show,” Garner explains. “You don’t have to like Anna. I don’t have to play a character that people have to like. Nevertheless you must be open and ready to understand why she did what she did, and to me, if you’re open to seeing and hearing that, it instantly humanizes her.”


Garner had to master balancing Anna’s influence with Langmore’s sass in Ozark, as both shows overlapped filming while in the COVID-19 pandemic. About the only thing both characters share is their innate intensity. “How Anna moves her tongue is totally different than how Ruth moves her tongue. Ruth is aware nothing about fashion,” Garner says. “That is Anna’s whole universe. Ruth’s just counting the dollar expenditures and is getting over bossing around strippers. Anna would never be caught dead walking at the Lazy-O [motel].”


Then, Garner realizes her starring roles do, case in point, have something else in common: “Maybe Anna would have a little bit fun bossing around the strippers, though. She might.”